Even though the herein disclosed catheter need never be withdrawn from the urethra for bacterial cleansing to eliminate bacterial contamination, a thorough flushing of the indwelling catheter and urethra with disinfectant solution is easily effected. Normally, all male patients having an indwelling catheter in their penis, and all female patients having an indwelling catheter in their urethra hardly ever receive a detailed catheter-toilette specifically directed toward the pari-catheter space between the urethral mucosa and the outside surface of the urethral portion of the catheter.
The main reason for such neglect is that there has not been any accepted effective method, technique or medical instrument capable of meeting this problem head on. The herein indwelling urinary catheter is specifically structured to meet this serious problem and still permit indwelling urinary drainage to continue uninterruptedly with absolute safety. Unavoidable leakage of bladder urine into the peri-catheter space is usually the result of uninhibited contractions of the detrusor muscle which is so often seen in patients with neurological diseases, or because of the catheter riding up to lift it's balloon off the bladder floor. For those who have a neurological problem, an indwelling catheter of the well known FOLEY type must presently be changed very often to avoid the development of encrustations, concretions (stones), and gram-negative bacterial infection with sepsis.
Before entering into a detailed discussion of the present catheter and it's use, it should be worth the effort to review some of the problems often arising in the use of the known type of catheters. All catheters previously designed to irrigate the penile urethra and provided with orifices situated at the base of the bladder are doomed to failure: First; the prostate gland is almost always hypertrophied and invariably the prostatic uretheral canal is so constricted that catheterization is required. To insert a catheter having perforations that rest within the prostate canal is to obviate the possibility of an irrigating fluid from escaping from the perforations into the prostatic canal. Second, a catheter often rides up into the bladder for about 1 to 4 inches and those catheters with perforations below the bladder-empty their fluids into the infected bladder instead of into the sterile penile urethra. Instead of being able to prophylactically prevent urethral infection, the catheter with sub-bladder perforations actually leaks contaminated bladder urine into the urethra around the catheter and contaminates the urethra.
Further, catheterization is reserved for those patients with prostatic canal constriction and occlusion and in whom normal urination is difficult or impossible. Catheters designed for urethral irrigations that have their outlet openings below the bladder neck cannot possibly function between the tight fitting around the catheter blocks the irrigation solution from entering into the prostatic urethral canal. The McKay patent of record, specifically teaches a catheter that overcomes the tight circumferential constriction of the prostatic urethral canal about the catheter wall, only because McKay creates and maintains sufficient fluid pressure to specifically overcome the prostatic tightness around the catheter.
The herein disclosed catheter embodies characteristics of the catheter disclosed in the aforesaid applications, except that, in this disclosure, the specific fluid openings are spaced along the length of the catheter tube and are associated with a deep spiral channel or channel that enables the fluid to flow on the catheter tube surface upwardly toward the bladder neck and downwardly along the penile urethra toward the lacuna navicularis and glans penis.
Only because of the free flow of irrigating or antibiotic solutions along the deep spiral channel, the cleansing action is able to encompass the areas of the membranous urethra and prostatic urethra, both of which have heretofore been omitted from the benefits of urethral irrigation. Further, should the catheter work it's way upwardly in a direction to carry the tube and balloon high up into the bladder, the instant catheter prevents the entrance of the antiseptic solution into the bladder.
The instant catheter tube also includes a multitude of circumferentially spaced, axially aligned, deep-cut grooves on the outside of the catheter surface adjacent to it's proximate end which are useful to retain an antiseptic ointment or jel to prevent infection of the lacuna navicularis as well as to retard an ascending infection that starts out at the penile-catheter junction. These grooves are in flow communication with the deep spiral channels.